Meh Teh

Man is this blog dusty!  The neglect isn’t willful, I assure you.  The thing about being a working writer is, well, work.  That combined with the fact that there’s life outside the internet that demands your time.

In any case, I’m chuffed that my story “Meh Teh” has appeared in The Colored Lens.  The title is a Himalayan word for what westerners call “yeti.”  As with most of my fiction, however, there’s a deeper story.  And deeper stories often involve belief.

It’s funny how easily religion can turn off a conversation.  Yet, I was recently at a book festival where several of the more successful authors I met were quite open about their religious convictions.  Perhaps it’s hiding in plain sight.  Like a yeti.

I have to admit that I’ve never been to Nepal, or even India.  I made it to a corner of Asia once in my youth, but I like writing about places I imagine.  I recall studying maps as a child so that I could set stories in Spain or France.  I did manage to get to the latter once, but my imagination of it is still vivid from many years before.

Writing is more than just an escape, but it is a kind of escape.  When I abuse my fiction by locking it in a closet while the more adult nonfiction comes to visit, I notice myself growing surly.  I need my fiction and stories like “Meh Teh” remind me of that.

The tale is really about what it means to be family.  If you’re like me you’ve probably got a monster or two on the ancestral tree.  We shouldn’t be too quick to judge, though.  Some of us likely appear to be monsters to others.

“Meh Teh” came to me when considering unlikely circumstances in which we find ourselves.  We follow jobs like ancient hunters followed mammoths.  We separate from those we love, and when we come back to them they may appear to be more strange than a yeti trying to drive a car.